Combining Texts

Ideas for 'After Finitude', 'The Need for Roots' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


3 ideas

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / b. Scientific necessity
If the laws of nature are contingent, shouldn't we already have noticed it? [Meillassoux]
     Full Idea: The standard objection is that if the laws of nature were actually contingent, we would already have noticed it.
     From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4)
     A reaction: Meillassoux offers a sustained argument that the laws of nature are necessarily contingent. In Idea 19660 he distinguishes contingencies that must change from those that merely could change.
Why are contingent laws of nature stable? [Meillassoux]
     Full Idea: We must ask how we are to explain the manifest stability of physical laws, given that we take these to be contingent?
     From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4)
     A reaction: Meissalloux offers a very deep and subtle answer to this question... It is based on the possibilities of chaos being an uncountable infinity... It is a very nice question, which physicists might be able to answer, without help from philosophy.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 11. Against Laws of Nature
Laws of nature are actually formulas of power relations [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The alleged 'laws of nature' are formulas for power relationships…
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[247])
     A reaction: Love it. This is precisely the powers ontology of modern philosophy of science. His Will to Power is not often recognised as closely related to this view.